Forum:Perceptions Muddled by Great Works
For a while now, I've been intrigued with the parallels and patterns we are quick to assign to our daily lives, especially when trying to make sense of things like politics. It's very easy to find parallels between the national situation now and the situation in the late sixties and early seventies, I think, with our own Vietnam and the vocal discontent with the present administration. And the parallels seem to work most of the time, right down to the ailing film industry. Another popular set parallels are those found in great works of literature and film, such as the oft-cited '1984,' or 'Brave New World.' The resemblences to our world as seen in those books can be striking at times. The similarities cannot be denied. Certainly, many political groups including politicians use these images to further their own agendas. The strategy is sound--the images found in great literature like '1984' and the iconic images from the 60's and 70's resonate with profound force in our culture. Added to this is the probability that campaigns utilizing this imagery honestly believe in their message. My question, then, is how much does our current situation fulfill the prophecy of Orwell, or revisit the tragic mistakes of the last generation, and how much have the images of both literature and history clouded our perception of the real situation? I was recently reading about teenage suicide rates, and how the rate has dropped in the last ten years, mostly thanks to anti-depressant medication. 'Ye gods!' I thought, 'that's soma!' Drugs are masking the true cause of our teenagers' suicidal tendencies! Or are they? Are these drugs merely anti-depressant drugs, no more, no less? Your thoughts (not on soma, but the whole business above). Arguing for something deeper than "muddled perceptions": 1984 and Brave New World aren't simply fantasies about civilizations that might exist in some future time. They're also snapshots from the second quarter of the 20th Century. Other writings from or about that period emphasize the more visible and violent aspects of totalitarianism, all of which are widely rejected today. Orwell and Huxley remain relevant to our own times because they wrote about an essence of fascism that has outlived the unsustainably intense wars and the self-evidently brutal tyrannies of their era: the industrial-scale construction of a mass culture that sustains the power of its makers. This is not a conspiracy theory. The most important thing to learn from the "free market" theories of Mises, Hayek, and Friedman isn't the idea that completely free markets might exist - it's the fact that the unintended consequences of self-interested human actions create social structures more complex than any individual could design or even comprehend. The "free market" thinkers were focused on voluntary action and its positive consequences. But why should the indirect consequences of huge coercive projects to control power and wealth be any less important? No one, and certainly not George W. Bush, has the knowledge or the intelligence to create the systems of government and corporate power that define our world so as to maximize the power of a ruling elite. We shouldn't be surprised that the nation that smashed the Nazis and buried the Soviet Union would also be the nation that had evolved the most sophisticated and durable machinery for dominating its own people. 1984 and Brave New World remind us that rule by a small elite must be accomplished by means other than brute force; the populace must be seduced into assisting with its own subjugation. The "counterculture" of the 60s and 70s was, for all its absurdities, a unique and important rebellion against the forces of social control. It probably wouldn't have happened in exactly the same way if the movement for black people's civil rights hadn't already challenged the elevated self-image of the United States, but it had to happen. When the most privileged and flattered generation of young people in the history of the world had the Vietnam War thrust into its faces, the mythology of the American Way was broken. When the prevailing "consume and be happy" message turned into "prepare to sacrifice everything to protect America's international interests," the reaction meant that the system of control had to adapt or fail. It adapted, and here we are. My point is that these issues are more than metaphors that may or may not apply to our current situation. Orwell and Huxley have shown us truths about power that will be meaningful for at least as long as nation-states exist. The low-level rebellion of the '65-'74 period is best described as a temporary failure of the social control system, one that was "fixed" by a political swing to the Right and a lowering of the expectations of middle and lower class Americans. What makes this interesting at this moment in history is that the Bush team's incredible combination of arrogance and incompetence may yet succeed in breaking the system again. Deadplanet 22:36, 19 August 2006 (UTC) Great works are great works Both Orwell and Huxley are surprisingly releveant today, and will likely always be relevant because of their keen insight into the trends and tendencies of a mass public. 1984 and Brave New World should never be discounted. The dangers both books show are real and should be taken seriously. The problem here is with specifics. While the novelists make these fears vivid and influential, they don't do much to address what really needs to be avoided. The show the results of a government out of control. They explain various reasons why the government was allowed to take over, but they're make-believe reasons. We could easily play on the fears created by the books and use them to justify any critique of the government (The Monopoly of the Republocrats). Is this responsible? My real concern with these books is that they may easily serve as what you might call 'colorful examples.' They are one version of a hypothetical future. They are not real, but they may appear real. This lends them to being used a rhetorical devices and something to shake over the heads of a fearful public. Instead of talking about reality, we end up debating science fiction. I say we're going toward 1984. You say we're going toward Star Trek. This debate is un-winnable at this point. So books and movies that imagine a dystopic future are good reads, good literature, and often very important to digest. But the images they conjure up must be actively relegated to the imagination and should play a minimal role in how we see the world. Perception is stronger than reality. Ferguson 18:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)